No wonder the military is strapped for troops. A tour of duty is only two weeks, apparently.
Archives for August 2007
Drudge Sure Is Having Fun
In the top left corner at Drudge:
BROKEBACK BATHROOM: SENATOR BUSTED IN AIRPORT SEX STING…
CRAIG’S LIST: TERROR IN THE TOILETS…
His Own Private Idaho…
No siren, though.
*** Update ***
Ugh:
In an interview on May 14, Craig told the Idaho Statesman he’d never engaged in sex with a man or solicited sex with a man. The Craig interview was the culmination of a Statesman investigation that began after a blogger accused Craig of homosexual sex in October. Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages.
The most serious finding by the Statesman was the report by a professional man with close ties to Republican officials. The 40-year-old man reported having oral sex with Craig at Washington’s Union Station, probably in 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him at the University of Idaho in 1967 and a man who said Craig “cruised” him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise. The Statesman also explored dozens of allegations that proved untrue, unclear or unverifiable.
Craig, 62, was elected to Congress in 1980. Should he win re-election in 2008 and complete his term, he would be the longest-serving Idahoan ever in Congress. His record includes a series of votes against gay rights and his support of a 2006 amendment to the Idaho Constitution that bars gay marriage and civil unions.
No one should have to endure that. They really shouldn’t.
*** Update ***
And in case you were wondering, lewd conduct warrants a resignation, prostitution does not. If only Craig had the foresight to solicit gay prostitutes.
What the World Needs
Is another cartoon controversy.
The WaPo refusing to run the Opus cartoon is shameful.
Why The Bathroom?
I am beginning to notice a trend:
Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom, according to an arrest report obtained by Roll Call Monday afternoon.
Craig’s arrest occurred just after noon on June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in the Hennepin County District Court. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He also was given one year of probation with the court that began on Aug. 8.
A spokesman for Craig described the incident as a “he said/he said misunderstanding,” and said the office would release a fuller statement later Monday afternoon.
Why is everyone soliciting sex in bathrooms, for chrissakes? Is there some underground bathroom/gay sex culture out there? And if you have ever been to a public bathroom in WV (especially the ones in out of the way gas stations), sex is the last damned thing on your mind. A hot shower with bleach is what I am thinking about when I use a public bathrom- not hot gay sex.
I guess there are other things to discuss about this, like what this means for 2008, and what it means that so many elected Republicans are apparently closeted homosexuals, but I can’t past the ick value of sex in a public latrine. For some reason I remember Craig’s name associated with homosexuality, but I can’t find anything in my archives.
(via RCP)
*** Update ***
In case you are wondering how the right wing will treat this, Hot Air addresses the issue of a Republican Senator soliciting sex in a bathroom and discovers… MEDIA PERFIDY:
If you’re wondering which party he belongs to, let me put it this way: the media will be sure to specify it in its reporting on this story.
Yes. The fallout from this one clearly can be pinned on the media, Allah.
*** Update ***
Poor Jeff is upset with me. You see- I fail to recognize the UTMOST SIGNIFICANCE in the fact that last week, a media report (according to the comments, several reports) was found that didn’t include a “D” next to Rep. Filner’s name after he allegedly shoved (or something) a flight attendant (or someone). Therefore, this is proof that the media is biased and that I am not a “TRUE CONSERVATIVE.”
I think, Jeff, what we all need to really get the lesson is a 22,000 word essay from you on the issue. Something fascinating. With lots of cockslapping and your normally dense and unreadable prose. And hopefully, if we are really lucky, you will get a comment from someone who disagrees with you, which you can add to the post in a 10,000 word update of additional impenetrable gibberish. Maybe you can throw in some thoughts on masculinity, too. Riveting stuff.
But let us know, first. I will need to have a few drinks first to catch up with you.
Meanwhile, On Another Planet
When something important happens on the political scene, I believe it is always useful to see what the Powerline thinks. Not because I will actually learn anything, or they will have anything interesting to say, but because I get a kind of perverse pleasure seeing what the crazy bastards actually think (and I use that term loosely). In today’s installment, we learn that Abu Gonzales is a victim:
I’ve never been a fan of Gonzales, but I can’t help feeling sorry for him. The “scandal” that led to his demise — the firing of the U.S. attorneys — appears to involve no wrongdoing on his part. Moreover, the underlying decisions and process appear to have been the product of the White House, not Gonzales. His defense of the decisions was hardly stellar, but if I’m correct, he was handicapped by the fact that they were not really his decisions.
Gonzales’s only real offense seems to have been mediocrity. But mediocrity in an Attorney General is nothing new (think Janet Reno), and any blame for this occurrence properly attaches to the White House.
Andrew Cohen summarizes the “mediocrity”:
When historians look back upon the disastrous tenure of Alberto R. Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States they will ask not only why he merited the job in the first place but why he lasted in it as long as he did. By any reasonable standard, the Gonzales Era at the Justice Department is void of almost all redemptive qualities. He brought shame and disgrace to the Department because of his lack of independent judgment on some of the most vital legal issues of our time. And he brought chaos and confusion to the department because of his lack of respectable leadership over a cabinet-level department among the most important in the nation.
He neither served the longstanding role as “the people’s attorney” nor fully met and tamed his duties and responsibilities to the Constitution. He was a man who got the job not because he was supremely qualified or notably well-respected among the leading legal lights of our time, but because he had faithfully and with blind obedience served President George W. Bush for years in Texas (where he botched clemency memos in death penalty cases) and then as White House counsel (where he botched the nation’s legal policy on torture).
For an administration known for its cronyism, and alas for an alarmingly incompetent group of cronies, Gonzales was the granddaddy of them all. He lacked the integrity, the intellect and the independence to perform his duties in a manner befitting the job for which he was chosen. And when he and his colleagues got caught in the act, his rationales and explanations for the purge of the U.S. Attorneys were so empty and shallow and incoherent that even the staunchest Republicans could not turn them into steeled spin. Devoid of any credibility, Gonzales in the end was a sad joke when he came to Capitol Hill.
If that is what passes for mediocrity, it is no wonder the Powerline thinks things are going well in Iraq.
*** Update ***
As always, Red State delights:
With the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales the President has an opportunity to do something with the justice department. The President needs to appoint someone who believes strongly in the foreign surveillance program, he needs to appoint someone who will go into the justice department, not with a new tone, but someone that will clean house of the endless career bureaucrats that been undermining the administration.
Why didn’t I think of that? The solution to the problems at Justice is clearly to insert more “yes-men” and some more cronyism. Nevermind, I know why I didn’t think of that. I’m not a blithering idiot.
Two Things
1.) I desparately need someone to update WordPress. I have no clue how to do it. Some of you responded to earlier calls for help, which leads to…
2.) If you have emailed me in the past three days and I have not responded, email me again. A spammer got hold of my gmail address, and I woke up with 5k messages (all autoreplies- a large number of people are out of the office at 3 am on a Monday morning). I simply deleted them all.
My Nominee To Replace Gonzales
Is Miss Teen South Carolina:
*** Update ***
Great minds, or something.
*** Update #2 ***
Let me just say that although I am making fun of this girl’s gibberish, I do feel really bad for her. It was an exceedingly stupid question- if I were asked I would shrug my shoulders and say “I don’t know.” Maybe and exceedingly stupid answer was the only appropriate response.